No One Escapes from Stalag 13
by Limmet
Summary: As one unlucky prisoner finds out – no one ever escapes from Stalag 13.


_Mornings come early in the camp, just before 6 AM. And they always, invariably, begin in the same way, with one of the guards slamming the door to their barracks open, shouting for the prisoners to get up._

_And as the guard walks between the bunks, yelling orders in a broken mixture of German and English, he just lies there for a few precious seconds, blanket pulled up over his head, losing himself in the fantasy of getting to sleep in for once. That he's excused from roll call and doesn't have to get up to stand outside in the cold to be counted._

_He thinks that once he gets out of here, once the war is over, the one thing he will do is sleep. _

_Sleep. For as long as he wants._

* * *

He wakes up a few minutes before 6 AM. There is an alarm clock next to his bed, the outline of its hands just barely visible in the dark. A gift from his mother, but he's never set it.

He doesn't have to.

He already knows without even looking at the dial what it's going to show, because he always wakes up at the same time in the morning. Almost an hour earlier than necessary in order for him to get to work in time.

No, he has no need for an alarm clock. He always wakes up before 6 AM anyway.

* * *

_Sometimes, if he closes his eyes and focuses, he can still remember the taste of the bread his mother used to bake. How it would smell, fresh out of the oven. _

_Not anything like the bread they get here, which can hardly be called bread at all, neither in taste nor in texture. It's hard enough to build brick walls with, and so dark brown that it's almost black. _

_They stretch it with sawdust, the Germans. Of course they deny it, but he knows that they do. Because normal bread doesn't taste like this. _

Sawdust bread._ He hates it. _

_That's another thing he looks forward to, once he's home again – freshly baked white bread. _

_Yes, once he's home again, he'll enjoy having white bread every day. _

* * *

Breakfast is usually a simple procedure – coffee and white bread with ham and cheese. He eats it while reading the morning's newspaper, his eyes scanning the pages for anything potentially interesting.

As usual, he's finished with the newspaper before the food on his plate is gone.

He takes another bite of the sandwich, chews a few times and then tries to swallow, but the piece of bread in his mouth seems to have suddenly grown. It's as if it has transformed into a horrible-tasting, stale sludge, like the batter has been mixed with sawdust.

Which is of course silly, because he knows that the bread comes freshly baked from Mr. Brown's bakery right across the street, but he can't help it.

So he just sighs and puts the remaining piece of bread back on his plate, leaving it uneaten.

* * *

_He pulls his jacket tighter around him where he's huddling pathetically on the hard cot. It's freezing in here, and it's not difficult to see how the cooler earned its name. At times he wonders if he will ever feel warm again. _

_But the cold isn't the worst of it. No, it's being locked up in this small windowless cell, not knowing if it's day or night, or how many days he has left of his sentence. Or even if there will be anyone at the end of it to let him out. _

_Or if he is in fact doomed to sit here in the dark for all eternity. Perhaps he has committed some horrible, unspeakable sin, in this life or some other, and now he's paying for it until the end of time. The thought is like an icicle slowly boring its way into his heart. _

_He eyes the dark walls – cruel, merciless shapes that loom over him, trapping him in this solitary hell. He wonders if it's possible to go crazy in here, where there's only him and these four walls surrounding him. _

_Trapped like an animal. No way out. Walls closing in on him, making it hard to breathe..._

Oh God. Please let me out of here.

* * *

It's always a relief when the doors to the elevator open. The soft _ping_ and the faint humming of doors sliding apart give him a strange sort of comfort. He's certain that other people in the office don't even notice these sounds anymore, having used the elevators hundreds, if not thousands, of times. But he hears them every time, waits for them, fears that _this_ time, they might not come.

He fears that the doors won't slide open, but instead leave him trapped here in this small, confined space.

_Trapped like an animal. No way out. Walls closing in on him, making it hard to breathe..._

He takes a deep breath to steady himself. It's just an elevator, he thinks, with soft light illuminating the interior and bland, forgettable music playing through the speakers. He bites the inside of his cheek, tasting blood. _It's just an elevator. _

It's with a small sigh of relief he hears the familiar _ping_, before the doors open and he steps out into the office.

* * *

_Once, he is caught outside the wire. A miscalculation, a clumsy mistake, and soon the area is crawling with guards. _

_He stands motionless, blinded by the searchlight that shines right into his eyes as the Krauts swarm him like flies. _

_One of the guards is really angry. _Verdammtes Arschloch_, he yells, as he sticks his rifle into his prisoner's face in a threatening gesture. _I should shoot you here and now!

_He closes his eyes, not daring to breathe for fear that the Kraut guard will make good on his threat and pull the trigger. For a frightful moment, the whole world grinds to a halt. Bile rises in his throat as cold sweat runs down his back. All that exists is the rifle barrel pointing into his face._

_But the guard doesn't shoot, though. Only prods him along by jabbing the rifle into his back, bruising the skin, as he continues to swear angrily. _

Scheisskerl, _he growls._ Verpisster Schweinehund.

_He walks on silently, thinking that he can't wait until the end of the war when he won't have to hear another one of those ugly German curses ever again. _

* * *

There's a man named Martin Schuler who works in his office. The man is of German descent, and is surprisingly loud and boisterous. He swears frequently in German, cursing whatever annoys him during the course of the day.

_Verdammtes_ book that doesn't contain the information he is looking for. _Scheiss_-window that won't open properly. _Verpisste_ car door that slammed his fingers this morning.

He can't help but flinch every time he hears Martin curse. For a brief second his body freezes up and he stops whatever it is that he's doing, before catching himself.

Of course, Martin thinks that no one can understand him. That's why the man swears in German, so that no one will take offense.

But that's not true. He understands every word, and wishes he didn't.

* * *

_The barbed wire encircling the compound is like a choking snare. And all he can do is stand there, staring miserably across it, wistfully longing for all the things that lie beyond – his home, his family, his _life_. _

_Positioned at regular intervals are the guard towers with their mounted machine guns, ominous silhouettes outlined against the sky. For a moment, he pretends that they are not there, that the barbed wire is not there, that he's free to walk out of here to wherever he wants... _

_A sharp burst of machine gun fire brutally rattles him out of his little fantasy. Dust kicks up at his feet as warning shots strafe the ground, only inches away from where he suddenly finds himself standing close to the fence, inside the forbidden No man's land. _

_Voices are shouting around him in German and English, accompanied by the sound of running feet. Slowly he raises his hands, for a moment almost wishing that the guards hadn't aimed at the ground. _

_At least once he is home, once the war is over, he thinks before the guards roughly grab him, there won't be any fences to restrict him anymore. _

* * *

The building where he works has a fence around it, with barbed wire lining the top.

There didn't use to be one. But in the last few years, they've had a couple of break-ins in the office, and some equipment stolen, so now there's a fence around the perimeter.

A fence with barbed wire.

As he walks out through the gates after his working day is over, a cold shiver runs down his back. He knows he is authorized, and that no one will challenge him as he leaves, but it doesn't matter. Every time he gets close to the fence, his heart skips a beat, as if he was doing something expressively forbidden.

And every time, he really wishes the fence wasn't there.

* * *

_After lights out, he lies wide-awake in his bunk haunted by memories, dreams and fantasies of better days long gone by, and the fear of what the future will hold. And he's scared too. Not that he'd ever admit to it openly, of course, but that's the truth. _

_And as sleep won't come to him, he just lies there, as the flashes from the searchlights sweep through the windows, briefly illuminating the barracks and the sleeping men inside. At times, he counts the seconds in between, desperate for anything to occupy his mind other than the disturbing, frightening thoughts that haunt him at night. _

_It doesn't do him much good, though. The sharp light only further illuminates his fears and inner demons, instead of dispelling them like it used to when he was a boy. _

_Maybe one day those search lights will make him go crazy, he thinks. _

_But after the war, at least, he won't have to lie awake like this, haunted by his own memories._

* * *

There's a street lamp outside his window. Its sharp, intrusive light pierces through the blinds, illuminating his bedroom.

He lies in bed staring at the light that seeps through the cracks of the blinds. He wishes it were dark in here, so he could sleep. But the light keeps him awake. Somehow, he just can't sleep with light in the room anymore.

The light disturbs him, makes him uncomfortable. So he pulls the cover over his head, and squints his eyes shut, trying not to think. But it's impossible; those old but still vivid memories won't leave him alone.

Before he falls asleep, his last thought is the words that were once spoken to him in a country far away, in a place that is probably now nothing but rubble overgrown by grass, in what now feels like another time. Another life, even.

And he realizes how true those words were. How right their Kommandant was.

_No one escapes from Stalag 13. _

_Ever. _


End file.
